Glossary
What is a filler word?
The sounds you make while thinking rather than speaking — um, uh, er — plus the crutch words that do the same job in a sentence, like "like", "you know" and "sort of". They are invisible while you talk and glaring once you hear yourself back.
Fillers are not a speech defect; they are how a brain buys a moment. In conversation nobody notices them. In an edited episode they pile up, because listening is slower than talking and every "um" is a small stumble the ear has to step over.
The honest rule is not to remove all of them. A few keep you human — strip every one and a relaxed conversation starts to sound like a news bulletin. What is worth cutting is the cluster: three "um"s in one sentence, or a crutch word that appears forty times in an hour.
Cast marks them in the transcript so you can see the pattern before you decide. Deleting one removes the audio with it, and the original recording stays untouched, so you can put any of them back.
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